Published Feb. 26, 2021Updated Feb. 28, 2021
Late last month, Anne Danielson-Francois, an associate biology professor at the University of Michigan, received an unusual package. She had instructed the sender to make sure the contents — spiders — were cushioned because she did not want their legs to break off.
When Dr. Danielson-Francois opened the little brown box, there they were — a male spider stuck on a glue trap, two female spiders suspended in an alcohol solution, and a few juvenile spiders.
Dr. Danielson-Francois, who works at the university’s Dearborn campus, had been enlisted by university officials as a sort of spider-buster. Last month, pest management teams found that unfamiliar spiders had moved into the basement of the Shapiro Undergraduate Library on the Ann Arbor campus, a space fewer people were visiting because of the coronavirus pandemic, the university said.